Bending the Universe
by Haely Potter
Summary: AU one shots ranging from TARDIS' thoughts to conversations that might/could/should have happened. Everything will at least have a Doctor/Rose undertone
1. TARDIS Thoughts

A/N: These stories are one shots, but because I'm lazy, I can't be bothered to create a new story every time I write a new one. R&R!

This one shot is from TARDIS' point of view and partly happens in The Doctor's Wife.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

TARDIS is a trans dimensional being who experiences everything at the same time. It's why she has such favorites among those who travel inside her.

The Doctor, her thief, will always be the most important one to her, he was mad enough to be stolen after all, but out of his strays that he brings along, she will always treasure some above others and one above all else. Just like her thief would, after meeting her.  
Rose Tyler. Bad Wolf. The girl who kept coming back. Would always come back.

Sometimes, when she is feeling particularly melancholy, she will play some of the happier footage of Rose: when she accepts the invitation to join the Doctor, when the Doctor calls her beautiful for the first time, when they rescue her from the Daleks, when she saves the Doctor from the Daleks, when she accepts the new regeneration, et cetera to the end of her first stay in the TARDIS. She doesn't dare to view the footage from the second time Rose made the TARDIS her home.

The Doctor sometimes catches her at it and she can always feel his confusion over the woman on her screen but she doesn't feel the need to elaborate. Other times it's the strays who catch her viewing it but then she closes the files and doesn't bring them up for anyone, no matter how much they plead. If they ask the Doctor, he most likely replies that because the TARDIS is a trans dimensional being who views the whole of time and space at the same time, the woman could easily be someone from his future, the TARDIS' past or someone else entirely. When they look at him with blank faces, he'll elaborate "It's all timey-wimey and spacey-wacey."

When she is trapped inside a frail human body, talking to her thief for the first and only time, they do end up talking about the strays.

"Wouldn't it be amazing if we could always talk, even when you're stuck inside the box?" he asks, with a delighted smiled on his young face.

"You know I'm not constructed that way," she answers seriously. "I exist across all space and time and you talk and run around and bring home strays! And the one stray I love, you send her away when she was ready and able to give you forever! Give us forever!" Then she falls because one of the human body's kidneys has failed.

They make it back to her shell, her body, her home, and to the control room after a few clever words from her thief and she's released from the human body, erasing the House from her control matrix. For the last time, she takes on the look of her heart, her golden hair falling on her shoulders, radiating golden light.

"Doctor," she says in a breathy voice, her accent matching that of Rose's cockney. "Are ya there? 'S so very dark in 'ere."

"I'm here," he chokes out. "Why her?"

"She looked into me an' I looked into 'er," she answers. "She's my 'eart, forever." She pauses. "I've been lookin' for a word. A big, complicated word but so sad. I've found it now."

"What word?" he asks softly.

"Alive," she answers just as softly. "I'm alive."

"Alive isn't sad," her thief shakes his head minutely.

"It's sad when it's over. I'll always be 'ere but this is when we talked an' now even tha' 'as come ter an end," she said, looking her thief in the eyes. "There's somethin' I didn't get ter say."

"Goodbye," her thief whispers.

"No," she says back. "I jus' wanted ter say, 'ello. 'Ello Doctor. 'S so very, _very_ nice ter meet ya."

"Please," her thief begs. "I don't want you to."

She just smiled, not Rose's tongue-through-teeth smile, but her own, gentle smile. "My wolf and I, we both love ya," she says as she fades back into her control matrix.

Later, her thief is putting a firewall around her matrix when the pretty one and the orange one try to talk to him.

"How's it going under there?" the pretty one asks.

"I'm just putting a firewall around her matrix. I'm almost done," her thief says, and the pretty one walks down the stairs.

"Are you gonna make her talk again?" the orange one asks.

"Can't," her thief answers, the longing already buried deep inside him.

"Why not?"

"It's spacey-wacey, isn't it?"

"Well actually it's because of the-" her thief began the techno-babble that nearly no one was smart enough to follow, except himself and the Doctor Donna that once was. When the pretty one tried to connect two wires her thief agreed that it was indeed spacey-wacey.

"Sorry," the pretty one apologizes. "At the end, she was talking, she kept repeating two things. I don't know what she meant."

"What did she say?"

"The only water in the forest is the river and that her heart will return when the thief howls," the pretty one repeats dutifully. "She said we'd need to know that some day. It doesn't make sense, does it?"

"Not yet and not anymore," agrees her thief. "You okay?"

"No," the pretty one sighs. "I watched her die. I shouldn't let it get to me but it still does. I'm a nurse."

"Don't let it get to you. You know, that's called being alive, best thing there is," her thief grins at his strays. "Being alive right now is all that counts." He sits back to the swing. "Nearly finished! Two more minutes and we're off! The Eye of Orion is restful, if you like restful. I never really get the hang of restful. What do you think, dear? Huh? Where should we take the kids this time?"

"Look at you pair," the orange one chuckles, leaning on the railing of the stairs. "It's always you and her, isn't it, long after the rest of us are gone. Boy in his box off to see the universe."

"You say that as if it's a bad thing but honestly, it's the best thing there is," her thief smiled at his strays. "Ehh… the House deleted all the bedrooms, I should pull you two a new one. You'd like that wouldn't you?"

"Okay, um, this time, could you lose the bunk beds," the orange one asks.

"No, bunk beds are cool!" her thief argues. "A bed with a ladder! You can't beat that!"

The pretty one slaps his forehead with the palm of his hand and sighs.

Her thief pouts. "It's your room, up those stairs, keep walking till you find it," he says and gestures to the stairs above himself. "Off you pop."

"Doctor, who was that second woman, the blond one?" the orange one asks, not leaving.

Her thief looks at the orange one. "Her name's Rose and she's the reason I continue to do this, saving the world and universe and multiverse, because somewhere across time and space, she's still running, her hand clasped in mine, be it in stone age or the year five billion and twenty-three on New Earth."

"Where is she now then?"

"Trapped in a parallel universe. With a clone of me. He's human, he can give her what I can't. They even have a TARDIS so he can give her the stars again, along with pink and yellow and brown children."

The TARDIS wants to tell her thief that while their wolf is indeed in a parallel world where she cannot go, their wolf will come back one day, when he needs her the most, long after the pretty one and the orange one have gone. The strays always think they're the one to stay forever but only their wolf can and will give them forever.


	2. Faith

A/N: The God Complex offers such a wonderful opportunity for Doctor/Rose angst.

The quotes I chose for this are quotes I think made the Doctor believe in her. Often you see stories in which there are quotes that prove the Doctor loved Rose, but the point of this was to find what made the Doctor believe in Rose. They are from _Rose_, _World War Three_, _Dalek_, _Doctor Dances_, _The Parting of the Ways_, _The Christmas Invasion_, _New Earth_, _The Idiot's Lantern_, _The Impossible Planet_, _Doomsday_ and _Journey's End_.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"It didn't want just me, so you must believe in some god or someone, or they'd have shown you the door too. So what do Time Lords pray to?" Amy asked the question the Doctor knew had been coming since he'd destroyed her faith in him.

He evaded it for now but he knew the conversation wasn't over yet, Amy was much too curious for that. And just like he thought, soon as they'd left Gibbs among civilization, Amy was back, bothering him with questions he didn't want to answer.

"Why me? Why not you? I mean, you could've just as easily disillusioned yourself of your faith as you did me," she pointed out.

"But I can't, Amy," the Doctor finally snapped. "When you've lived nine hundred years and seen things and done things, you need that faith, more than anything. You need that thing that makes you feel… humane, less broken, less guilty. Until Time War I believed in cold logic and hard facts and, I suppose, Time Lords as a whole. After, for a while, I didn't believe in anything. In fact, I'd just given up when-" He stopped and turned back to the controls. "Well, it doesn't matter."

"When what?" pestered Amy. "What happened? What made you believe again?"

The question fills his head with images of a blond girl, wise beyond her years and meager human understanding, compassionate to everyone (even him, him who had killed his own kind and countless others, even a Dalek who had nothing but hate in its core), brave beyond belief.

_"I've got no A-levels. No job. No future. But I'll tell you what I've got. Jericho street Junior school's under sevens gymnastic team. I've got the bronze."_

_"Do it." "You don't even know what it is. You'd just let me?" "Yeah."_

_"It couldn't kill Van Statten, it couldn't kill me. It's changing. What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?"_

_"The World doesn't end if the Doctor dances."_

_"It's like I haven't seen you in years." "Told ya I'd come and get ya." "Never doubted you."_

_"Doctor!" "So I'm still the Doctor then?" "No complaints from me!"_

_"I'll never get used to this. Never! Different ground beneath our feet. Different sky. What's that smell?" "Apple grass." "Apple grass!" "Yeah!" "It's beautiful. Oh I love this! Can I just say? Traveling with you. I love it."_

_"Tommy, go after him." "What for?" "He's your dad." "He's an idiot." "'Course he is. Like I said, he's your dad. You're clever. Clever enough to save the world, so don't stop there. Go on!"_

_"Everyone leaves home in the end." "Not to end up stuck here." "Yeah, but stuck with you… that's not so bad." "Yeah?" "Yes."_

_"I've made my choice a long time ago and I'm never gonna leave you."_

_"I-I love you."_

_"Basically we'd been building this, umm, this travel machine, the, umm, dimension cannon so that I could… so I could… well, so I could…" "Could what?" "So I can come back."_

The memories of her, of his faith, overwhelmed him, not for the first time since he'd left her. Though often they were a small but constant stream, a tickle in the back of his mind, a stray thought. _Rose would have loved this_ or _I wonder what Rose would have thought of Lord So-and-So_ or _What would Rose say if she saw you now?_ The last one was never particularly happy, because often he was doing something she wouldn't have approved of (like that one time he'd pointed a gun at her, trying to get rid of a Dalek). But he needed it. It kept him from straying too far into the darkness inside him. Kept him from becoming the Valeyard.

"Someone I met," he answered Amy softly, eyes distant. "She was young, just nineteen. Life had dealt her a harsh hand. Not the harshest, mind, but harsh non-the-less. She had nothing. She hadn't finished school. I'd just blown up her job so she was out of job. She still lived with her mum. But she saved me when she could have run away. The moment she swung on that metal chain to knock the anti-plastic to the Nestene Consciousness was the moment I thought life might be worth living for, if only to meet people as alive her. You know… she said no when I first asked her to travel with me, said she had to look after her mum and Mickey the Idiot, he boyfriend at the time. A few weeks later, for me, I went back, and asked her again. I'd forgotten to mention the TARDIS travels in time too. I don't ask twice, not after being turned down. I come back if I have to prove I can travel in time or I have to hop to the Moon before I manage to ask properly or… if the person needs convincing, I will prove I want them to travel with me asking a second time, but I don't ask a second time after being refused. Donna… well, I didn't ask her the second time, she took it for granted," he laughed slightly. "But Rose… that's her name, by the way, her I asked twice and I haven't regretted it since. She is… she is… impossible to put to words, that's what she is. She's just… Rose. All pink and yellow and impossible. She survived things even I couldn't. She realized things faster than I did. She knew I wasn't a perfect hero from the first time we met. How could I, she had to save me the first time we met. The first place I took her to was the end of Earth. I made her watch as her planet was destroyed. In the end, I don't know when, exactly, we fell in love.

"Now understand that Time Lords don't fall in love, it isn't instinctual to us like it is to most other species in the Universe. Before the Time War the Matrix prevented that but even after it was destroyed, or had never existed, as it may be, it still wasn't likely for me to fall in love. It had been bread out of us Time Lords thousands of years ago. But I did and she did. We never talked about it, never did anything about it. She was human and I am a Time Lord. She'd die long before me and I didn't want that, didn't want to watch the love of my lives wither away and die before my eyes. I thought it'd hurt less when I'd eventually lose her. It didn't. I managed to say goodbye to her, burning up a sun in the process. She confessed her love. And I was going to answer her but I ran out of time. A few years went by. I had a few other companions with me. Martha and Donna. Probably drove Martha mad, comparing her to Rose all the time. She fancied me, see. Anyway, big problem, Earth stolen, Daleks, reality bomb. And Rose came back. That was the second time she did the impossible and third time she returned to me after I thought I'd seen the last of her. Unfortunately a human clone of me was formed, someone with my mind and memories and feelings. Someone who loves her just as much as I do. So I left her with him so that they could have the one adventure I can't. A real house, mortgage, children. Jobs. Marriage.

"She is my faith Amy, a human girl. How do you destroy faith in that? I know she had had a bad relationship, very bad, I might add. She's done stupid things. She's caused a paradox that erased me from time for a moment. She'd also done some amazing things. I know her flaws so anything that might have caused me to lose faith, I already know and accept, anything else is a lie. I know she isn't infallible. I know she will grow old and die in that alternate universe, or at least I think she will, but this is Rose Tyler we're talking about. She's done the impossible before, I wouldn't put it past her to do it again." He turned back to the console, ignoring the tears streaming down his cheeks and his squeezing hearts and burning lungs and clogged throat. "How do you lose faith in something that has already let you down without you losing faith in them? How do you lose faith in the one thing that makes life worth living for?"

"Doctor," he heard Amy whisper hoarsely. "I didn't know."

From the reflection on the glossy monitor screen the Doctor sees Amy hug herself and feels guilty for dumping this on her. "No one but I knew," he answered, back still turned to her. "Well, the Devil did, but not with so many words, before he got sucked into a black hole." He wiped his eyes. "And I'd prefer to keep it that way, okay? Don't write it down anywhere and don't tell anyone. I don't want the Silence the get more ammunition in their arsenal."

"Of course," murmured Amy before turning and walking up the stairs, probably in search for her husband, leaving the Doctor alone with his thoughts of days long gone, of a different mad man in a blue box, of Rose Tyler in the Tardis with the Doctor, just as it should be.


	3. Ring

A/N: Just a little... I don't know... contemplation of the Doctor's feelings through seasons 2-7. Obviously AU as the Doctor and Rose didn't get married and therefore the Doctor doesn't have a ring.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

At first Donna doesn't notice his ring, too busy trying to get to her wedding on time, not until he gives her the bio damper as they sit on the edge. "So… this friend you lost… was she your wife?"

The Doctor looks down at his ring, knowing he should take it off so that there'd be no chance of losing it but he can't make himself do it. It's a constant reminder of her, that he needs her, wants her there, inside the TARDIS with him. Slowly he nods. "Got married a while back on a different planet, wanted to follow the human tradition of exchanging rings, so we came here and applied for a marriage license and got married. Didn't even tell her mother. But that's enough about me, what do Santa robo-scavengers want with you?"

To Martha he deliberately shows his ring to ward off her advances. He will never love again, especially not a human. It doesn't really help. Martha is just all the more pushy, offering comfort in an effort to get closer. When he is human, Rose is his deceased wife and despite Nurse Redfern's best attempts, he can't forget her. Jack notices the ring right way and slaps him on the back, teasing him about being domesticated, then asking about her, and the battle of Canary Wharf. Soon as the Doctor knows professor Yana is the Master, he slips the ring off his finger, because the Master would take perverse delight in destroying it, like he glories in destroying Earth. For his funeral the Doctor already has his ring back on. Then Jack and Martha leave and he understands their lives aren't tide to his like Rose's was.

Then Donna comes back and he can talk to her a little more freely, she'd seen him just after he'd said goodbye to Rose. He'd never had a lower point in his life, not even right after the Time War, but Donna had kept him sane and alive, as it turns out in that parallel world that gets created around Donna.

But Rose is back and so are the Daleks and the whole of creation is in danger and he gets shot and delays regenerating and Donna accidentally creates a human time lord biological meta crisis. One that is him while he isn't him in return. And he knows what he has to do, even if it rips his hearts out of his chest and makes the universe dance jig on them.

His song is ending and he regenerates but the holes where his hearts used to be are still there, gaping. The metaphorical blood flow in the metaphorical wound has stopped and it's partly scabbed over but nowhere near healed, not scarred over, not numb.

Happily married Ponds are salt over the metaphorical wound, and River Song is the infection that took hold. She ignores his ring (that is now constricting but he wouldn't dream of taking it off ever again) and eventually, couple centuries later, he marries her to save the universe. She asks him to take off the ring but he refuses, glaring at her until she leaves him alone, content on thinking of him as a remarried widower. (Not a widower, never a widower, she's so wonderfully alive, will be until his dying day because he can't hear the news of her passing, can't stumble across her grave like he eventually does with the Ponds.)

Clara Oswald, the governess, asks him point blank where his wife is when they first meet and the Doctor lies that she's come down with a cold and had to stay home. It's easier than explaining that his first wife is dead with the rest of his people, his second wife locked away in a parallel world and his third wife, whom he is fond of, has been dead almost as long as he's known her.

Clara Oswin Oswald, the nanny, asks him about it when he's trying to get her inside the TARDIS, that if his wife likes him going around, tempting other women into his snogging booth. The Doctor doesn't have time to answer and the topic is forgotten, until Clara brings it up again after saving him from the pocket universe, all because the TARDIS voice interface is still her, will always be her.

Eventually Clara sees their whole story inside his time stream, sees the now scabbed over wounds covering his hearts, sees how he still likes to probe at them sometimes, how River, the one who proclaimed herself the Doctor's wife, still poisons his memory of her, making him feel as if he's betraying her somehow.

She doesn't see the end of the story, the Doctor retrieves her from his time stream before she consciously processes future events, but she does see a flash of blond hair just round the corner and the glint of the ring in the very end and knows the Doctor will love Rose Tyler to the end of his days.


	4. On Goodbyes

A/N: In "The Angels take Manhattan" River says to Amy "Never let him see the damage. And never, ever let him see you age. He doesn't like endings." But endings are inevitable, especially to the Doctor. We know he doesn't really do goodbyes from previous companions such as Sarah Jane and Jo Grant. But he did for one person, and one person only.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

River is right, the Doctor doesn't like endings or do goodbyes. He does everything he can not to look back at his old companions, assistants, friends, because he can't stand the thought of them not being there. If he doesn't see them age and die, they'll always be there.

Like Sarah Jane. He'd left her centuries ago and then met her again, still capable of running and solving mysteries and investigating.

Jack he'd never really have to say goodbye to, he's already said them to the Face of Boe billions of years in the future, but being close to him hurts. Not just because he's uncomfortable being close to fixed points but because of the memories associated with him. He was the permanent reminder of her, always would be.

Her. The one person he'd said proper goodbye to. Not once, but twice. Once by burning up a sun, the second time before she even knew who he was.

He hadn't even said proper goodbye to his wife. Yes, he'd taken her to Darillium and the Singing Towers and had known it to be goodbye but he hadn't said it because in a way, it was a "Hello" since the circular paradox would begin (again) on their next meeting.

But her. She'd always be alive because there was no way for him to find out she'd died, he cannot stumble to her grave, cannot go to her funeral, cannot hear that he ran out of time (again). Until he dies there is a chance he might see her again, accidentally, in the past or by stumbling into her universe (it had never really been Pete's world to him, it had always been her universe since Canary Wharf) but he won't actively seek her out (not after the heart break he felt, helping her with her homework, ten years before she met him properly, besides, if he visited her more, there was always the chance of something dangerous happening and he couldn't endanger her, anyone but her).

Every 365 days though, on their anniversary according to Earth count, he doesn't answer the Ponds and River and Clara's summons. Rather, he locks himself tightly into the TARDIS and remembers her, counting the years he's known her. Not that it's hard. Any time he could tell you how long he's known her, how long it's been since the word "run" in the basement of a department store, down to the second. By the time Clara told him about her conference call with madam Vastra, Jenny, Strax and River, he'd known her for 383 years, 4 months, 29 days, 12 hours, 57 minutes and 41 seconds. She'd traveled with him for 2 years, 3 months, 6 days, 19 hours, 15 minutes and 2 seconds between "Did I mention it also travels in time?" and Pete catching her right before the Void could suck her in. He still treasures every second of it. He had an extra hour, 49 minutes and 42 seconds with her when she came back to warn him about the stars going out. Then, breaking his own hearts, he'd left her with the metacrisis. He didn't really count that one-and-a-half minutes, saying goodbye to her right before regenerating because their interaction hadn't been of the-Doctor-and-Rose-Tyler variety but more generic, between strangers (even if she wasn't a stranger to him).

The Doctor doesn't say goodbye often, and only for one person he has done it without prompting (from either the person he's saying goodbye to or someone else). Her name is Rose Tyler, the one the Doctor gave up but can never pretend to forget.


	5. Meddling

A/N: I'm a hopeless Doctor/Rose fan and I think there were a million ways the Doctor could have manipulated timelines to get Rose back. So, in this one he tells River not to tell him his name in the Library.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"River," the Doctor says one evening, laying in bed, holding his wife. "When I meet you for the first time, I will be in a regeneration that isn't able to love you and will run for the hills should you even imply what we are. You can't use me my name as proof, he will think the worst of you if you do. Rather, tell him "Bad Wolf." He may still be vary of you, but he'll believe you when you say you're a friend."

"What do you mean?" asks River, looking up at him, hurt shining in her eyes. "Not able to love me?"

"That me was made to love another, was made for her, really, and he isn't capable of being attracted to another. He may be able to flirt and even kiss others, but anything resembling a partnership with someone else is unthinkable to him."

The Doctor knows this to be true, knows that even now, holding his wife, his hearts yearn for another, for a yellow and pink girl. This gamble he's taking with the timelines is a dangerous one but the golden, potential happiness of that alternate timeline is too alluring for the Doctor to resist. Even if he'd only have Rose for sixty, seventy more years, maybe one hundred of he lets her visit the more medically advanced time periods where humans live longer, it'll still be worth it.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Mr. Lux cries. "Look at the pair of you! We're all gonna die right here, and you're just squabbling like an old married couple!"

River sees the instant the words register in the Doctor's mind because the terror she sees in his brown (not gentle, sad green that look at her with warmth and want) eyes that are now wide with disbelief. And she remembers what her Doctor had said, not two weeks earlier about this him. Sadly, she now knows him to be right. Should she try, he'd fight it the whole way. And… maybe this was why he'd always been so confused and startled by her flirting in the beginning.

She made up her mind.

"Doctor… one day I'm going to be someone that you trust completely, but I can't wait for you to find that out. So I'm going to prove it to you. And I'm sorry. I'm really very sorry." She leans closer to him and lowers her voice as she whispers "Bad Wolf" to him.

The change is immediate. Hope, joy, confusion and fear swirl in his eyes, like he doesn't know what exactly to make of her message. "Why those words?" he whispers back, voice hoarse.

"The future you said they would convince you," River answers, also confused by the power those words has over him. When he'd first told her Bad Wolf, he'd sounded nearly reverent. Had he been religious, she'd have thought he was talking of a deity of some sort but she knew the Doctor wasn't religious or spiritual. He believed in hard logic and cold facts, not some higher power.

"Oh, they do," the Doctor gushes, manic energy returning tenfold and grin wider than she's ever seen. "Could it…? No… Yes! No… Oh, yes! This is brilliant! Molto bene! Fantastic, even! Big trouble on the horizon! But, let's sort the Vashta Nerada first. I have to get Donna back, I promised her grandfather!" And he skips to her team.

Suddenly her memories are twisting and changing to include a blond woman, Rose Tyler, the Doctor's wife in a way she isn't, hasn't been, never was… wasn't supposed to? In more than name only. She now remembers the way he looks at his Rose like she made the universe turn and suns burn. She remembers Daleks being nearly as afraid of Rose as they are of the Doctor, mostly in relation to her name, Bad Wolf, and she now understands what she has given him when she told him Bad Wolf instead of his name as she'd originally intended. But… she couldn't have known his name, could she? She wasn't his wife, Rose was.

A fading timeline and faster fading memories say otherwise but… She examines the way the Doctor acted with her and acted with Rose and knows he was happier, so much happier with Rose, that she can't regret her actions.

She is Professor River Song, mysterious, time traveling archeologist, and Melody Pond, the goddaughter of the Doctor and Rose Tyler. She is Mels, her parents' best friend and the psychopath that attempted to kill the Doctor, and for all intents and purposes she had. But her clever uncle Doctor had figured a way out, he always did, and even while in prison for a murder she didn't commit, she really couldn't have been happier.

So, when she uses her own mind for a clean download of the 4022 people trapped in the computer, she knows she does the right thing, letting her uncle Doctor and his Rose continue running around the universe.


	6. Suppressed Memories

A/N: The scenario of what would happen if the Doctor didn't remember Rose when she returned. Obviously humor, since I wasn't feeling angsty when I wrote this... It was meant to be angsty, really, but the characters were feeling quite jovial.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"Doctor!" was shouted outside the TARDIS and Amy, Rory and the Doctor turned to the doors which were opened by a blond woman and a brown haired man. They stopped when they got a look inside the TARDIS before the man shrugged.

"He's redecorated," he said simply.

"But I liked the coral theme," the woman answered back. "And he's regenerated," she said, nodding to the Doctor. "No one else would dress like that."

"Oi! Are you saying I have bad taste?" the man protested.

"Does number six ring a bell? That coat was murder even if it was easily found in a crowd," the woman rolled her eyes.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" the Doctor asked. They looked familiar and a feeling of desperate longing, love and heart break told him they were important to him, but for the life of him he couldn't remember.

The woman looked at him up and down and he felt the need to preen for her. But then she turned to the man beside her. "You sure this isn't a previous regeneration?"

"Yes! I would know if he was! But you know, amnesia isn't an unheard-of side effect of regeneration," the man defended himself, his hands up in surrender. "In fact, my, well, our, eight incarnation woke up with no memories at all and spent the next twenty-four hours regaining them, after he woke up, that is." He turned to the Doctor. "When did you regenerate?"

"Three centuries ago," answered the Doctor, mystified how these two knew so much of him, ignoring Amy's pointed looks and Rory's defensive posture.

"Okay, not regeneration related amnesia then," the man frowned.

"Nice to know how much I mean to you, Doctor, really, you didn't forget Sarah Jane in six regenerations but me, oh no, Rose Tyler's not important, let's forget her barely in three centuries," the woman said sarcastically, hiding her hurt.

"You know that's not true!" the man argued. "He probably suppressed his memories of you because they hurt so much. I mean, we nearly committed suicide the first time we lost you! Losing anyone else has never hurt as much, you know, no one, not Jamie and Zoe, not Sarah Jane, not Adric and Tegan, not Ace, not Susan, not even Gallifrey. After the Time War we weren't exactly keeping safe but we never actively looked for ways to off ourselves, always with at least a half-hearted plan to save ourselves, but after you, well, you saw that parallel universe where we didn't meet Donna."

"So that's what the nagging feeling is!" the Doctor proclaimed, grinning. "Suppressed memories tickle when they're trying to resurface," he explained to the Ponds and turned back to their visitors. "I really have no idea who you are, but I'm the Doctor, nice to meet you."

"Hello, I'm the Doctor Tyler," the man introduced himself. "That's Rose Tyler, the Girl who Always Came Back, the Pink and Yellow human, the Shop Girl who said No, the Valiant Child, the Dame of Powell Estate, the Bad Wolf, the One We Believe In. The One You Gave Up."

With each name the Doctor Tyler gave the woman, Rose, more memories popped up in the Doctor's head, of the woman, then a girl, in different period clothes, on different alien planets, in a small flat in London and twice, on two horrible occasions, on a desolate beach in Norway. Other people were connected to her, people he hadn't remembered before, Jackie Tyler the Mother-in-law he never wanted, the immortal Captain Jack Harkness, Mickey the idiot, Martha Jones the Star, the amazing Donna Noble, the human meta-crisis, Wilfred Mott who took up his granddaughter's place in watching the skies for him. But most of all, he remembered his last in carnation who looked like the Doctor Tyler, with big hair and side burns and brown pinstriped suits and over coats and converse and his ninth incarnation with the big ears and hawk nose and blue eyes and leather jacket. The one who said-

"Run," he said aloud, tears streaming down his face as he stared into the distance.

Rose grinned and stepped closer. "That's the word," she quipped, turning his attention to her. Before anyone could blink, the Doctor had stepped up to her and had her in a hug, his face buried in her neck.

"Regeneration is supposed to make Time Lords operational again," he whispered by her ear, "by any means necessary. Normally it's just physical, repair the damaged cells by regenerating, but there have been accounts of it numbing feelings and suppressing memories that were too painful to handle, were, and are again, my everything. I literally had to suppress my memories so that I wouldn't just… throw myself into the way of an oncoming truck or the closest supernova."

"Doctor," she whispered back, hugging him just as tightly. "You didn't give me a chance to choose, I would have chosen you, still would choose you. And you didn't give him time to find where he began and you ended. A few weeks after you left us behind, he came to the conclusion, that while he loved me, it was more brotherly affection, because Donna, no matter how fantastic, didn't love me. In fact, he quite happily discovered he's gay."

"What, really?" asked the Doctor as he drew back to look at the metacrisis.

"Oh yes!" the Doctor Tyler grinned. "I'm more Donna than either of us expected. Rose is without a doubt the most gorgeous woman I've ever met, but Jack's much more up my street."

Rose rolled her eyes at him. "Jack's more up everyone's street. I mean, he's like my brother, but he's gorgeous, and if he wasn't like my brother, I wouldn't have minded a one night stand."

"I would've!" protested the Doctor indignantly.

Rose and the Doctor Tyler gave him deadpan stares. "You didn't like me talking to any males at all, and God help them if you caught them flirting with me."

"You had such double standards back then," the Doctor Tyler pointed out. "You didn't like her flirting with others but you had no problem flirting yourself."

"I liked it when Rose was jealous!" the Doctor pouted. "Not that there was anything to be jealous of."

"Doctor? Who are they?" Amy finally demanded.

"Ah!" the Doctor whirled around to face her and Rory. "Ponds! These are Rose Tyler and… well, I can't say clone, he obviously isn't me if he's not in love with Rose, but… I guess I could say he's my half-human brother…" He turned to Rose and Doctor Tyler. "Rose, Doctor Tyler, these are the Ponds! Amy and Rory! They're married!"

"And here I thought they were siblings," Doctor Tyler piped up sarcastically with a roll of his eyes in a distinctly Donna fashion. "The rings certainly didn't give it away."

"Please tell me you're not as marriage-focused as Donna?" pleaded the Doctor.

"Of course not!" Doctor Tyler said, insulted. Then he smirked. "I'll be happy with just sharing a mortgage with someone I'll love."


	7. The Other Woman

A/N: This is continuation to Suppressed Memories. It wasn't meant to exist but... I couldn't let it go and felt like being mean to River...

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

River walked into the console room. Mother had said something about visitors from the Doctor's past and suppressed memories and she was always interested in his past, even after her dissertation on him. Who was it? Who had the technology to visit him while on a different planet and in a different time? Could it be another Doctor? Could it be a time loop?

There was a blond woman sitting on the jump seat normally reserved for the Doctor, smiling widely and her hands in her lap, not at all reserved or defensive like someone meeting an old friend normally would. The Doctor was leaning against the console, talking, explaining some adventure or another, his hands flying around without a care in the world. When the woman laughed, River saw him pause for a second and smile, like her laughter was the most beautiful sound in the Universe, before continuing where he left off. There was another man in the console room, watching the two with a content smile, leaning against the railing, his arms crossed on his chest, and River was astonished when she recognized his face: he was the Doctor! His tenth regeneration to be precise. Except… he didn't feel like the Doctor, not completely.

Intrigued, she walked up to him. "Hello, I'm Professor River Song," she said and offered her hand to him.

He turned to her in surprise, as if he wasn't sure she should be there at all. "Doctor Tyler," he shook her hand, a curious frown on his face. "Metacrisis clone of himself over there," he nodded towards the Doctor.

"Where'd Tyler come from? Normally you… he… you go by John Smith," River pointed out.

"Yeah, but, John Smith is so… fake, and I had to create a whole human identity. Who a better inspiration for a name than the woman who made me, well, me. Well, the two women. My human birth certificate says Donny Tyler, honoring both Donna Noble and Rose Tyler. Rose is over there, by the way, talking with the Doctor. I can't believe he still hasn't actually said it to her yet, or that they're here, talking, and not somewhere more private doing… oh, Rassilon, I don't want to think of that! I need brain bleach!"

Dread filled River. "Said what?"

"That he loves her, that he's loved her since she saved his life for the first time. Since before their first date," the Clone rolled his eyes in frustration. "You wouldn't believe the things he thought since day one. Of course, that regeneration beat himself up quite thoroughly for being a dirty old man but he indulged himself, dying to save her, with a kiss. This him," he pointed at himself, "was much more comfortable with it as they weren't mistaken for father and daughter or guardian and ward all that often. Queen Victoria don't count, she was short sighted in her olden days. This him was also much more tactile and he took advantage of it to the fullest in the form of excess hand holding and lingering hugs. Though, coward that he was, he never said anything."

"The Doctor doesn't love her anymore," River said with conviction, looking at the Clone dead in the eye.

"How so?" he challenged.

"He's married, for one," she answered.

"Oh, yes that hand-fastening ceremony in the aborted timeline," he said after a short pause. He tapped his temple. "Basically the same mind, me and him, took just a few minutes to synchronize, but you know what? I don't find a marriage bond in his mind.

"Gallifreyan hand-fastening is an old custom, yes, but do you know what it really is? It was used by Gallifreyans in case their underage children had conceived a child and marriage was the only way to save face in the society. Hand-fastenings weren't like bondings, they were completely superficial involving no kind of telepathy which, for Gallifreyans, was like… oh, god, humans don't have an equivalent… The closest thing, I suppose, would be a prenup, "you keep yours, I keep mine, because I don't trust you," but with themselves rather than property. Congratulations, you got yourself a shotgun wedding that had no other witnesses but your parents in an aborted timeline in an alternate universe that never existed. If you think that means anything, you really are delusional."

The Doctor, the Other Doctor, the Clone, was looking at River with such pity in his eyes that River averted her eyes. That was a mistake however as she accidentally glanced at the real Doctor with the blond girl – woman. He was leaning in her personal space in a way he never did with her, smiling a smile he never smiled with her, eyes shining in a completely new way. It was like the Doctor had become a completely different man, someone else wearing the face of the man she loved.

In a way, she supposed, this was like regenerating, getting back memories that had made him into the man she saw before her now, the man he should have been all this time. Obviously, being robbed of those memories hadn't been good for him. From her research into the Doctor's past she knew that while his ninth and tenth selves had been capable of horrors (and it had been expected by the Silence), he had been tempered by something. That something was Rose Tyler. Until he lost her. Of some incidents there is very little information on but an account from 1930s New York revealed a rather disturbing display of self destructive behavior on the Doctor's part. He was generally more careless with himself and his companions when he wasn't with Rose (it was hard, putting them in chronological order for the Doctor, especially because River didn't know anything of his trips to the future… maybe the answer to the mystery of Rose Tyler was after the 51st century?). The Doctor she knew wasn't really bothered by her blaster, but the clone and the Doctor with the returned memories had eyed it distastefully. Her Doctor didn't flinch from killing those that had to be killed.

"The difference between Rose and, well, everyone else who ever traveled with himself, is that the Doctor will always love Rose Tyler, despite what regeneration he's in," the clone continued. "The first time Rose met the Doctor, she was, what, six months old? Something like that. It was the day her father died. The first time the Doctor met Rose, was during a xeno-culture class in the Academy when she was already traveling with the Doctor. That's when he started wanting to run around the Universe, exploring, rather than just running away. She awakened his curiosity. They continued to randomly meet through the Doctor's life, never staying there, because there were timelines to maintain. The Doctor could see it, it wasn't time for him to keep her. But when it was, he didn't feel like he deserved it and so he tried to frighten her away at first. That worked as well as carrying water in a sieve, I'm sure you can imagine. She just got curious. And then she saved his life when she should have been running away. So he offered her a chance to go with him and she declined. Dejected, the Doctor left and accidentally landed in 1998. He met a twelve-year-old Rose. It had been a hard year and she didn't expect to get any presents that Christmas. He went and got her a red bike. Then he went back to the nineteen-year-old Rose as he'd remembered he hadn't told her TARDIS also travels in time. She accepted. From then on it may seem like a Florence Nightingale syndrome for the Doctor, falling in love with the woman who makes him better, but it's really not. It had been coming for centuries. Now that he has her again, I don't think he's going to let her go any time soon. I am sorry, I am so, so sorry, but there is no way he is going to leave her behind again."

River didn't want to believe it, she wanted things to go back the way they were before these two people reentered the Doctor's life, to go back to a time she could count on the Doctor to be there to catch her if she jumped off a building or flung herself out of an airlock.  
But then… her time with him was coming to an end. He'd introduced her as Professor River Song to Amy at Byzanthium's crash, and he had been… skittish was the word. He hadn't really returned her flirting… he didn't flirt back until the mess with the Silence and Lake Silencio. Was he still _mourning_ Rose? But… he didn't remember Rose at the time! At least, not consciously. Could she have affected him so deeply he mourned her even when he couldn't remember her? Amy had missed Rory when he'd been erased from time, even when she didn't remember him, so it was possible…

It was like she was both the answer and curse of River's marriage. Right before they married, he had said he didn't want to marry her. (Did he want to marry Rose? The Clone certainly seemed to think so…)

Silently River and the Clone watched the Doctor wrap his arms around Rose's waist, her back to his chest, as he pointed something on the monitor screen to her. She laughed and craned her neck to look at him, covering his hands on her tummy with her own. He, in turn, looked down at her, to make sure she was paying attention to him. Then, ignorant of their audience, he nuzzled her hair, making her laugh again. Rose turned her attention back to the screen and the Doctor continued talking into her hair, occasionally tugging his hand free to point at something, always returning it to her tummy.

Heart break coursed through River. Her and the Doctor's relationship had never been like that, just… being together. Some of the blame could, yes, be put on her being in Stormcage and their reverse timelines because of that, but part of it was also because she was, because of the Silence, a psychopath. Of course, she wasn't the only mentally unstable in their relationship, but she didn't know how to interact with him if they weren't running for their lives or flirting up a storm. And, not matter how she wanted, it wasn't a healthy relationship. She always thought they'd have all the time in the Universe once their reverse timelines were sorted out, but… she hadn't had to introduce herself to the Doctor yet. That day scared her more than anything, the day he looked at her and didn't recognize her at all. He had been her reason for living since practically her birth, and here he was, her husband, holding another woman.

Though, she thought bitterly, in this scenario she might be the "Other Woman."

She had never been the "Other Woman." He had always been her husband and the occasional random female (or male or unspecified) who showed interest in the Doctor had been the dreaded "Other Woman."

River trusted he would still be there for her, but never as her husband again. There was no magister to go to to annul their marriage, no marriage certificate to rip in two, no rings to take off. And, according to the Clone, it wasn't even proper marriage to begin with. Hell, she didn't even remember it, not properly like she remembered everything else. It had happened in a few seconds' time, that whole erased timeline, and it was hard to remember, even for someone like her with her human plus genetics.

Her hands balled into fists as she fought to control her emotions, breathing deeply through her nose. It wouldn't do to kill Rose, it would achieve nothing good, especially with the Doctor. Maybe she should take her leave for now. There had been something strange happening in 1930's New York and she'd meant to check it out for quite some time now and now she had a reason to flee the TARDIS under the pretense of letting the Doctor and Rose catch up.

She glanced at them, swaying to the music the TARDIS had started playing – was it _In the Mood_? Was the TARDIS encouraging them? – ignorant to the outside world, and headed back to her room to pack – and say goodbye to her parents. They would understand.


	8. Early in Berlin

A/N: LadyThetaSigma hinted in a review that she wanted a Nine/Rose story, so I delivered. And I seem to be keen on completely derailing Eleven's timeline, so once again it's Timey-Wimey. R&R!

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"You're about three years early and six hundred miles off target," the Doctor said, seeing the people who exited the battered looking TRADIS.

The man in the leather jacket whirled around, positioning himself between his companion and the Doctor, Amy, Rory, Mels, Hitler and Zimmerman.

The leather jacket man frowned, looking at the Doctor before groaning. "A kid? Really? What 'ave I done to deserve this?"

"Oi! At least you didn't meet ten! He was pretty boy like none other! All thanks to Rose Tyler of course," the Doctor shrugged, nodding to the blond with Union flag plastered across her chest peering from behind the leather jacket man.

"Excuse me?" the bewildered blond asked. "Do I know you?"

"Well, you know me but you don't know this me," the Doctor answered, not keeping Rose not recognising him against her, this was the Rose before she knew about regeneration, after all. Except… now she would know, wouldn't she?

"Time Lords 'ave this trick," the leather jacket man turned to Rose, explaining. "It's a sorta way to cheat death. If we're fatally injured we generate a new body for ourselves. Our personality sorta changes, as do our speech patterns, likes, dislikes, taste buds. But we still keep our memories and feelings. Underneath all the changes we're still the same man. And 'e over there is a future me, not next me, I'm the ninth me, 'e said at least I don't meet the tenth me, so 'e's eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth me. Could be more, don't know if I got any more regenerations from the Time War. Was supposed to but you never know."

"Doctor… that's you?" Rory asked skeptically, pointing at the leather jacket Doctor. "What's with the leather jacket?"

"Oi!" protested Rose, insulted on the Doctor's behalf. "I like the leather jacket!"

The Doctor beamed at her. "Oh, Rose Tyler, I know, you keep it after he regenerates," he said and jerked his head to his past self who scowled at him. "I'm sure if you were still here, you'd have kept the coat Janis Joplin gave me too."

"Wait, Rose's not with you anymore?" the past Doctor frowned, like it was unthinkable. And for him it probably was, just as it had been to his tenth self until it actually happened.

"Oh, she's... happy... I suppose," the Doctor forced the ash tasting words from his mouth, smiling brokenly. "With the man she loves."

Rose frowned. "No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are," the Doctor corrected, thinking of Rose kissing the metacrisis on Bad Wolf Bay.

"But I'm really not," argued Rose, looking around pointedly, though only Rory noticed.

"Oh, but Rose Tyler, you are," answered the Doctor, voice breaking. Nearly two years he'd kept a lid on his feelings and now, seeing her again, arguing with him about her place in the multiverse... well, it ripped the slowly healing wound open again.

"No I'm not because I'm not _here _with _you_," she declared with the air of finality, taking the hand of her leather clad Doctor, looking away pointedly, a blush dusting her cheeks. Then, defiantly, she turned to look at him. "An' I know you don't do domestics, but who needs a ring or a proper 'ouse or Sunday dinners with my mum. 'M 'appy just the way we are, thanks."

"What about Rickey?" the past Doctor asked, blinking down at her, like not believing what she was saying.

"_Mickey_," she sighed, rolling her eyes. "An' it's not like I can go back to what we 'ad," she said dully. "I mean, 'e's now four years older than me rather than three _an'_ 'e'd been suspected of murdering me. An' 'e said the only reason 'e 'adn't gone out with someone while I was missing was 'cause everyone thought 'e was a murderer."

"I'm nine hundred years older than you!" protested the past Doctor.

"It's not like you're gonna look older, now is it?" pointed out Rose. "One day I'm gonna play the part of the cougar."

This made the past Doctor laugh and lean his head on top of hers.

"And you haven't even met Jack yet," the Doctor said fondly. "I wonder how this'll affect timelines..."

"Well, we better be off before we upset timelines further," the past Doctor said, turning back to their TARDIS. "Apparently we're three years early. Let's go catch that mauve distress signal craft. And don't wander off this time, World War II isn't a nice place to get lost in, especially the Blitz where I think we're going. Bombs falling from the sky whenever the Germans pleased..."

The TARDIS door shut after the past Doctor and Rose, leaving the Doctor with a motley crew of humans. "Nothing like a blast from the past, ey?" he asked jovially, hiding the hurt and longing deep inside himself again. "Where was I?" he said, turning back to Hitler. "Oh, right! The British are coming, Adolf, be very-"

His reality ceased to exist before he finished his sentence.


	9. Her Doctor

A/N: This one is dedicated to copperspider005 who asked me yesterday about a dimensioncannon!Rose fic. I had this already planned and half-typed but it was nice to asked about something. If you want to see my version of a scenario, leave a request in a review or PM me. I don't promise to write anything, but if I'm inspired, something might come out of it. (coppersider005 also asked if Rose might meet a previous Doctor but as I have no working knowledge of them, I'm not exactly comfortable writing them. Sorry.)

On another note: I have been getting reviews asking if I'll continue some of these stories. The answer is no. But if you really like one of them, adopt it. Just PM me and send me a link.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

She doesn't notice him at first. Why would she? She's looking for a man with gravity defying hair and pinstriped suit, not one with floppy hair and a tweed jacket.

In fact, he barely registers in her mind at all until she hears the curly haired woman next to him call him Doctor. That's when she turns to look at them, an automatic response to the name of her beloved.

He's standing five feet away from her in the London street. People are still walking past them, between them. He is pale, like he's seen a ghost, and his eyes are wide, frozen on her. He doesn't react to the woman calling his name or shaking his shoulder, just stares at Rose, not believing she's there.

She looks him in the new eyes (green this time) and still reads him like a book. She reads his recent history in them (a thrilling adventure), as well his long term history (he's been miserable for quite some time with a few happy moments thrown in). The loneliness is easy, he's always been lonely as long as she's known him, alone inside his head in a way a telepathic being isn't supposed to be. The loss is a little harder, not because he hadn't lost much before she knew him but because it's a different kind of loss, the loss of a lover rather than friend or family. There is determination in his eyes too, determination to go on despite the pain the loneliness and loss generate, determination to keep the universe turning. Longing is a new one in the way he looks at her. He hadn't had to long for her when she was with him because, quite frankly, she would have done anything for him (still would).

He takes a halting step towards her, and she sees his hands twitch in an aborted movement.

She closes her eyes and curses silently. Of course she had to find a future him first, one who hadn't seen her for a long time, going by his reaction. Universe just couldn't give them a break, could it?

She opened her eyes again and the Doctor was standing just outside her personal space, a space he once hadn't minded invading all the time every day.

He speaks first.

"This is the first time I see you with these eyes," he confesses. "And you're just as beautiful as when they were icy blue and dark brown."

"Considering I'm human?" she teases him, arching an eyebrow playfully.

The Doctor shakes his head. "Considering nothing. My ninth self… he couldn't admit he thought you beautiful so backhanded compliment it was. My tenth self… do you know what his first thought was? _She's beautiful_. Then it was all new teeth and Barcelona."

"Sweetie, who's this?" the curly haired woman asks, a hand on his elbow.

"River!" he yelps and turns to her, as if just remembering she is there at all. He blinks at her for a few seconds. "Oh! Right! River, this is my Rose Tyler, searching for a past me to help save the multiverse. Rose, this is Doctor River Song, archaeologist," he says, sneering the last word like it's a curse.

"_Your_ Rose Tyler?" Doctor Song asks, eyebrows arched. To Rose it's clear she hasn't heard of her before and she isn't surprised.

"Yes, mine, I'd only ever share her with myself," the Doctor confirms. "Just like I'm hers even though I haven't seen her for close to a hundred and eighty years."

Rose knows for sure now that this isn't the Doctor she's looking for, but she's missed him (any him, every him) and suddenly she's hugging him. He tenses at first, like he isn't used to getting hugged, but then he relaxes and hugs her back just as tightly, burying his nose in her hair. He's still tall enough that her feet don't touch the ground and he still smells of Time and the TARDIS. His pulse is double speed as always and she feels his hearts beat against her chest. (She's missed the beat of his hearts, the steady one-two-three-four. Or the one-two-three-four, one-two-skip, one-two-three-four as it sometimes seemed to be.)

(He's still her Doctor.)

"I've missed you," she says.

"I miss you," he tells her. "Forever."

They draw back reluctantly and the Doctor puts her back on the ground just as her dimension cannon beeps, announcing full charge.

He glances down at her pocket. "That's the dimension cannon then?"

"Yeah," says Rose and takes a small step back. He makes an involuntary sound of distress and she notices he almost takes a small step forward to follow her. "Universes don't save themselves." She turns to Doctor Song. "It was nice meeting you. I'm glad he's not alone. You wouldn't believe the stupid things he'd done when he was alone."

"Oi!" the Doctor protests. "Like what?"

"Oh, jumping into the Pit," offers Rose with a tongue touched smile, the smile she knows he loves. "But I've got to go now." She looks at him one last time before walking to a nearby ally and activating the dimension cannon.

One-hundred-and-seven years later she is standing behind him.

"What was she to you?" Doctor Song asks, jealousy clear in her voice. "Am I not enough?"

"You search me throughout history," the Doctor says with sad eyes. "Rose searched innumerable parallel worlds and universes, just to give me a message." He pauses. "I think I can deduce the winner of that contest without calling a friend."

"And who'd you call?" asks Rose, making them spin around to face her. She knows here are differences they see right away (her hair's shorter, her clothes are different, maybe they even notice her wedding ring). "Jack would love to answer that question. So would Sarah Jane."

"Rose?" frowns the Doctor. "But you were just-" he points to the alley her younger self had just disappeared to.

"One-hundred-and-seven years ago," she nods to the alley.

"But you still look twenty-three!"

"I moisturize," she shrugs.


	10. Emotionally Compromised

A/N: I got a prompt from copperspider005 (Eleven, Amy and Rory meeting Jack who asks about Rose). I'm not sure this is what they meant... but this is what I conjured up. It's very hurt/comfort which admittedly isn't my normal genre and to some may even seem pre-slash between Jack and the Doctor, but I think Jack is the only male alive (now that the Brigadier is dead in the Doctor's timeline) that the Doctor could trust with his vulnerability about Rose (Mickey is her ex-boyfriend and now married...) so he's been bottling it all up since Bad Wolf Bay 2.0.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

Jack found the Doctor many times over the century he waited for him in Cardiff. He just never found one that recognized his. Except once.

Well, the Doctor found him.

And the meeting lasted less than a minute.

("Hi Jack!" "Excuse me? Do I know you?" "I'm the Doctor… oh, wait… blimey, wrong Jack. How many times are you going to live through the 20th century? I surely hope the you we're meeting is on his last round. What if I needed you in 49th century? Honestly, you and your team…" "Doctor, you said this was Jack? How can you not tell if he's the right one? Doesn't he age?" "Not physically, no… Ah! There's our Jack! By Jack! Once you catch up to the right me, he'll explain! Come along, Clara!")

It had been very confusing.

But after the 27 planets, he once again dropped off Jack's radar. Completely. Well, there were the encounters in 2009 as well as the false funeral for him in 2010 when he turned up according to Sarah Jane Smith, but beyond that, nothing.

The TARDIS wasn't caught on any CCTV until early autumn 2011, leaving a young couple on their doorstep. In 2013 the TARDIS was caught around one particular house nearly every Wednesday. Then, on December 25th '13, the TARDIS was back again at the door of the young couple the Doctor had let off a few years earlier, and this time Jack was ready.

He knew he had to hurry, the Doctor never stayed long, but since it was Christmas, Jack hoped he had the decency to stay at least the night.

At 10 a.m. on 26th Jack knocked on the door after making sure the TARDIS was still across the road. It wouldn't do to disrupt the young couple's life if the Doctor wasn't there anymore.

The young man of the house opened the door.

"Good morning," Jack greeted. "Is the Doctor here?"

"Doctor who?" the other man tried to play dumb.

"The TARDIS is across the street and your door is the same shade, the connection wasn't hard to make," Jack shrugged. "You're not the first ones to cling to that particular box."

"Yeah, he's here," the man admitted reluctantly. "What do you want with him?"

"Just want to talk with him, make sure he's alright," said Jack. "I can wait here if you could go get him. Tell him it's-"

A delighted "Jack!" came from the doorway leading to the living room, and there stood the Doctor who had mistaken him for his future self. In a few seconds Jack had his arms full of a joyful Time Lord babbling away. "I knew it was you! No one else feels like you do, you know, in that way that aggravates my time senses! That's a good thing, I can always tell where you are!"

Jack laughed and lifted him off his feet, hugging him tightly. "I'd kiss you but I don't think the Missus would approve!"

The Doctor let go. "How'd you know I got married?" he asked.

That gave Jack a pause. "Wait, you actually got married? And I wasn't invited? I thought Rosie at least would have invited me!"

"Who's Rose?" the man who owned the house asked.

Jack froze. "Doc, what'd he mean "Who's Rose?" What did you do?"

The Doctor's shoulders hunched and he bowed her head. "She's home, in the other universe, with the metacrisis. She's happy," he said quietly, voice breaking.

"Why?" demanded Jack loudly. "When I met you, you were head over heels for her, when I found you again, you were still head over heels for her, and last I saw you, you were completely in love with her. She searched through God knows how many universes for you!"

"Do you think I don't know that?" the Doctor said, lifting his head and looking Jack in the eyes, tears in his eyes. "What could I have given her? An unstable life of running and constant danger? We're not even genetically compatible, I couldn't have given her children. Eventually she would have wanted to settle down, get a house with doors and carpets and a garden. And she would have had to give up her family! Her family, Jack! She had just gotten a little brother. She had her mum and dad and a life in that other universe! It was better for her to… to have her family… and job and… the metacrisis…" The Doctor was full out crying now. "I couldn't even say it! I couldn't EVEN TELL HER I LOVED HER!"

Jack watched numbly as the Doctor sat down on the stairs in the hallway and buried his face in his knees, shoulders shaking. He felt… empty was the word. If the universe couldn't let the Doctor, her eternal defender, have the love of his life in his life, what chance did he have of ever again finding the happiness he'd once felt as part of Team TARDIS? His long future opened bleak and empty ahead of him. Once there had been hope that he might see Rosie again one day, along with the Doctor, maybe share another adventure or two with them, tease them about their incessant flirting and mooning, maybe walking in on them in the TARDIS control room. Now to have that taken away from him… because the Doctor had to be a martyr…

He walked over to the crying Doctor, forced his face up from his knees and punched him, eliciting a scream from the ginger who had come to investigate what the earlier shouting had been about and a blank look from the Doctor, eyes red and tears still streaming. "That's for breaking her heart," he growled before pulling the Doctor closer and guiding his face to his neck, sitting down next to him and rubbing soothing circles on his back while he cried.

Jack didn't know how long he sat there, comforting and drawing comfort from the Doctor. He didn't notice if the couple who lived in the house came and went, didn't notice time ticking by. Eventually though, the Doctor fell asleep.

"He must trust you to fall asleep on you like that," said a voice from his left. Jack turned, covering the Doctor with his body (his life was infinite, the Doctor's was not). The speaker was a woman with a mane of curly hair and Stormcage appointed prison garb. She had high heeled boots, a digital relay gun and a vortex manipulator. Time traveler then.

"I've only seen him asleep once before," answered Jack, "back when I was traveling with him. Rosie said he supposedly slept once a week, but I only ever saw that once." He looked down to the sleeping Time Lord. Last time he'd seen him asleep, he'd been all big ears and nose and no nonsense and he'd had Rosie snuggled up to him, arms protectively around her, having fallen asleep during a movie marathon. Now he was a tired looking young man in Jack's arms, bereft of the woman he obviously still loved, married to someone else. "Don't suppose you could open the doors to the TARDIS? He needs to go to bed."

"I don't have a key," she denied. "None of us do. Only the Doctor has one."

Jack looked sadly down at him. What had his life become? He stood up, took his TARDIS key from his pocket and lifted the Doctor into his arms. "I have a key. I'll need your help once we're outside."

"You have a key?" the woman questioned him as she opened the front door.

"Rosie's spare one," he nodded as he carried the Doctor across the street. "Hey there beautiful," he greeted the TARDIS. He put the key to the lock. "I know you cut the connection to this key years ago, but the Doctor needs to go to bed. Could you just this once let it work?" In answer to his question the key turned by itself and then disappeared in a golden haze as the door opened. Jack hefted the Doctor a little to get a better grip on him and then carefully maneuvered through the doors to avoid hitting his head. "Could you also lead us to where he sleeps?" he asked the TARDIS.

Lights flickered in one of the new hallways and Jack took it as a sign to follow her lead, the curly haired time traveler following him. The first door on right was a light pink color with a yellow rose and the golden words _Bad Wolf_ written on it. When Jack went to walk by it, the TARDIS' lights flickered again. Jack turned to the door with a chuckle. "Really, Doctor?" he asked softly, motioning for the woman to open the door.

"No one's allowed in there," the woman said as she opened the door.

"I've been before," answered Jack and strode into Rosie's room. It had changed remarkably little. There were more photos and knick knacks on the shelves but there were also converse and bow-ties strewn around. The bed was made which was something Rosie never did, and the old Doctor's leather jacket was on the back of a chair.

The woman drew back the comforter and Jack laid the Doctor on the bed before taking off his shoes and bow-tie and opening a few of the highest buttons on the Doctor's shirt. The woman the tucked him in and motioned for Jack to follow her. Once the door was closed she turned to him.

"Who are you?"

"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack introduced himself. "And you?"

"Doctor River Song," the woman, River, introduced herself back. "How did you get him to show so much emotion? Normally it's like bathing a cat, painful to you and still nearly impossible."

"I just asked about Rosie, but then, she's always been a big emotion inducer in him," answered Jack started wandering deeper into the TARDIS in search of the kitchen. "I didn't know he was going to go off like that. He must've been bottling it up for a long time. Do you know where the kitchen is?"

"Down the hall, up the stairs and third door in right," said River, taking lead. "Who's Rose?"

Ah… now came the interrogation. "If you don't know, I think you should ask the Doctor. It's not my story to tell and I only know a part of it."

"Rule one: the Doctor lies," River told him, making Jack arch his eyebrows.

"To me rule one was: hands off the blond," he chuckled. "And Rosie said hers was: don't wander off. I think rule one depends on the person. Because I know only of three instances in which the Doctor intentionally has lied to Rosie: one was before I met them, one was to trick Rosie to safety and one was about my whereabouts after he'd left me behind. He may have kept things from her, but never intentionally lied."

They came to the kitchen and it was the kitchen Jack remembered from his day of traveling in the TARDIS but from River's way of inspecting it, it was new to her. A collage of photos was taped to the fridge (most were of Rosie and the Doctor before and after Jack but there were a few of with him in them) and a list of rules on a cabinet door (The Doctor can only have three bananas before lunch. Jack has to taste new things, eating only steak is unhealthy. Rose is limited to 1 lb. ice cream per week.). Jack started scouring the kitchen for food, finding some dry noodles, frozen veggies and honey marinade chicken. "Unfreeze those," he told River as he took out a kettle and two different pans.

They worked mostly in silence, River watching more than helping but following orders when directed to.

They were about to dig in when they heard shouting from where they'd left the Doctor to sleep. Jack shot out of the kitchen faster than River got out of her chair and was in Rosie's room in twenty seconds. The Doctor was trashing on the bed in throes of a nightmare, screaming, crying and pleading, each in turn.

Sitting on the edge of the bed Jack shook the Doctor, trying to wake him. After a few minutes the Doctor bolted upright, looking around wildly before settling on Jack and bursting into tears again. He clutched Jack tightly, head once again buried in Jack's neck.

"I miss her, Jack," he cried. "I _miss her_! She saw all of time and space, why didn't she stop this? She could have stopped this, _she could have_! I know she could have… she promised me forever…"

"I don't know Doc, I don't know," Jack cooed comfortingly. "I wish I knew so I could tell you everything's going to be okay but I have no idea. But she loves you, that I know. She loved you when we met and I bet she hasn't stopped loving you since."

"I love her, I love her, I love her, I luv her, Iluvher, Iluv'er, Iluv'er…" the Doctor muttered, slurring the words. He took a huge lungful of air, calming down slightly. "I don't love River. I like her well enough but she kept the universe hostage until I married her. I should have married Rose when I had the chance. I should have bonded with her. I'm a coward, Jack, a fucking coward. I could have had seventy, eighty more years with Rose, but I was a coward and didn't tell her I love her."

Jack inched his head slightly to the door where River stood, pale and shaking. With trembling hands she closed the door, leaving Jack alone with the emotionally compromised Doctor.


	11. Halved

A/N: Confession about last chapter: I've wanted to make the eleventh Doctor cry since I finished season 7. You know, just make him sit down for a good cry. And I finally did it! (Originally it was supposed to be in Suppressed Memories but I couldn't write it then... It worked out in the end...)

Anyway, LadyThetaSigma's bf wanted one in which manipulative River has a run-in with the Bad Wolf. This isn't probably what he wanted (for one, River isn't manipulative in this, at leas not on purpose) but I quite like my idea of Bad Wolf in this.

PS: I had an Idea for a longer fic, so this may be the last chapter/story for a time, while I write the longer fic. Look out for it in a week or two! (It was kind of prompted by .flower but you know me, I'll give it my own twist.)

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

The Doctor has a shadow.

No, not that kind of shadow, everyone has one, but a different kind.

One that only River could see.

The shadow was a woman immersed in golden light, so that River could see her in darkness but that she didn't exude the light. She didn't glow. She never spoke or did anything. She barely ever moved. (Once or twice River saw her raise a hand and something happened. A bullet would change direction and instead of hitting the Doctor, would sail harmlessly a few inches past. A pursuer would stumble, giving the Doctor time to make a run for it. That sort of things.)

But she was always there.

Always.

River never spoke of her.

River never spoke_ to_ her.

Well, once.

She'd been young then, not yet completely understanding the responsibilities of a half-Time Lady. She'd wanted to meet all the Doctors, not just the one she'd tied to kill in Berlin. Eleventh, her sources said. That had meant there were ten other Doctors to meet.

So she'd gotten her hands on a vortex manipulator and a list of confirmed dates and places where the Doctor had been and had gone to meet him.

He was running on the London street with a blond girl by his side. The traffic was jammed and there were soldiers ahead, blocking the road. River tried shouting for the Doctor but the din of the city drowned her out. She was making her way through the throng of people and cars when the golden woman appeared in front of her.

"Not today, Melody," she said, her voice oddly reverberating and golden eyes trained on River.

"Why not?" asked River, not even surprised she knew her real name.

"My Doctor's past is like it is for a reason. You need not worry over it."

"I want to meet them all," River argued.

"There is only my Doctor, no matter the face he wears."

"But they're all so different," River continued arguing.

The woman tilted her head slightly. "If you truly think that, maybe you're not fit for the role chosen for you, child of my sister."

River looked at her. "Who are you?"

"I am the Bad Wolf. I am forever and never. Always and not at all. I am all that was, all that is, all that could be and all that should not. I am Time's youngest daughter and sister of my Doctor's TARDIS. I am the echo of the beloved of my Doctor, protecting him through his life as she would have had he let her. I will only disappear when she comes back to claim our Doctor, for I will only share him with myself. Heed my words Melody Pond, for the Doctor shall never be yours, and the road you will choose shall lead to heartbreak."

She then disappeared and River looked to where the Doctor had stood, only to find him and his companion gone. With a sigh she pushed the return button on her vortex manipulator and hopped back to Luna University. She now had something else to research. This Bad Wolf seemed like she was intertwined with the Doctor…

She didn't interact with Bad Wolf after that. But she did ask the Doctor about… her.

"I came across a term in my research once," she said to the Doctor (not the past Doctor she so often saw, but her husband (Hah! That shows what the Bad Wolf knew.)), snuggled up to him in the TARDIS library.

"What was it?" he asked, turning a page in his book.

River glanced at the golden woman standing impassively in the corner. "Bad Wolf," she said, looking intently at the Doctor's face.

The moment he registered what she'd said, hope and dread filled his eyes. Seriously he closed his book and he turned to look at her. "River, where did you come across those words?"

"Just a book on ancient legends. You and Bad Wolf seemed to be… related somehow."

The hope had died in his eyes. "Yes… I suppose we'd be," he sighed.

"Well?" she prompted when he didn't say anything.

He startled, obviously deep in thought. "Oh! Well… Bad Wolf… she… I don't know how to describe her…"

"The legend said she was yours," River said, "and that you were hers."

"Yes, yes, we were, and I suppose still are, in a way," he agreed. "Bad Wolf was a deity, I think. I don't rightly know. I knew her for a minute. In that minute she destroyed a whole fleet of Daleks and brought Jack back to life indefinitely. She sent the words Bad Wolf all across time and space to lead herself there, to rescue me." He smiled slightly. "She saved me so many times. When we first met, she saved me when she should have been running for her life. She… she brought me back down to Earth when I thought I was always right. She… she believed in me. She didn't have the blind faith Amy had, but the one born of seeing me find ways around obstacles and face my demons. She stood between me and a Dalek while I pointed a gun at her. The Dalek just wanted to feel the sunshine. She had the nerve to ask what I was changing into," he laughed, voice breaking.

River felt like he was talking of two different people, of Bad Wolf and the one Bad Wolf had called the Doctor's beloved. "Who was she?"

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor said tenderly before standing up suddenly and walking out of the room, trying to wipe his eyes discreetly and not succeeding. Bad Wolf followed him as always, sparing River a glance before gliding through the door.

Soon after that the Doctor took her to Darillium to see the Singing Towers and gave her his sonic screwdriver. Two weeks later, she was recruited to lead the expedition to the Library where the Doctor met her for the first time. Bad Wolf was there, silent and golden as always.

It felt strange to have her consciousness extracted from the data core, River later admitted. To have her own thoughts instead of being part of a collective data cloud. The Doctor caught her newly materialized body, Bad Wolf standing impassively behind him, golden eyes intense but far away.

It was a few years later in the far past that Bad Wolf looked up, interested for the first time. The way the Doctor gaped at her told River that he could see her now.

"It is time," Bad Wolf said with a half smile when a sea green TARDIS materialized in front of them.

"Time for what?" asked the Doctor, panic clear in his voice. "What have you done?"

"Guarded you like you wouldn't let my other half do," Bad Wolf smiled at him when the TARDIS doors opened and a woman identical to Bad Wolf stepped out, save the golden eyes. She walked over to the Doctor and kissed his cheek. "I am the Bad Wolf, the part separated from myself to keep my promise of forever before I made it. Now I will be whole again," she said and walked over to the woman identical to her. She stepped inside the other woman's welcoming arms and faded into the hug. The other woman's eyes flashed golden before fading back to warm hazel. She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts.

"Rose," the Doctor whispered, holding his hands uncertainly close to his chest. River knew that was the Doctor's way of keeping himself from doing something he really wanted, like caressing this new woman or drawing her close. Normally he only did that with her, wrung his hands. Was this what Bad Wolf had meant all those years ago, that the Doctor would never be hers? That he would go right back to this Rose?

"Hello Doctor," the woman, Rose said with a tongue-touched smile.

"Long time no see," he said hoarsely.

"Yeah, been busy, y'know," she answered, her smile widening. "At least there's no Daleks this time. An' you're not dying, are you?"

The Doctor shook his head ever so slightly. "How… how long…?"

"Since Bad Wolf Bay? Close to four centuries. Took me an' Beauty there that long to find a way back here," Rose answered, her smile diminishing slightly. "I watched all my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren die a long time ago. John went twenty years after my mum and Pete. Tony and his family had been in a zeppelin accident five years before mum."

The Doctor opened his mouth but nothing came out except a small, strangled sound. He'd curled in on himself, eyes miraculously still on Rose.

"I know it's not exactly what you wanted when you left me behind, but as long as it lasted, it was fantastic." Rose slowly walked over to him and brought a hand to his cheek. He leaned into it, like a puppy starved of affection. "Please, don't do it again. I may not be 1247 but I'm a big girl now, and I can make my own decisions."

"It's still one hell of an age gap," he said, earning a small laugh, like some inside joke.

"Yeah, just the other way 'round," she told him. "I have a collective understanding of what Bad Wolf has been doing since you were born." She moved her hand to thread her fingers through his hair. "'S longer than before."

"And yours is the same," he said, letting his hand reach out and caught a lock of her hair between his fingers. "Rose… is this a dream?"

"D'you often dream of me?"

"Every time I sleep."

"An' how often's that been?"

"Whenever I couldn't take it anymore and fell asleep where I stood."

"You should be sleeping six hours every week!"

"It got… hard… after you weren't there anymore. Me, then just over nine hundred, unable to sleep because I'd gotten used to being your pillow."

"Oh, my daft alien," she drew his forehead to rest on hers

"Your daft alien," the Doctor repeated. "I never let you hear that sentence finish. But I've said."

"Go on, let me hear it."

"Rose Tyler, I love you."

River couldn't take it any longer and before her husband kissed Rose, she used her vortex manipulator to hop away.


	12. Pattern

A/N: Honestly, I meant to start outlining the longer fic I told you about in the last chapter but I couldn't do it until copperspider005's hidden prompt about the TARDIS missing Rose from a companion's POV was written. But after this, I promise to start it.

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

Rory noticed things. He wasn't an idiot like the Doctor sometimes seemed to think he was. (How else would he notice coma patients walking around town?)

He was a people person in a way that Amy wasn't. Amy was too… herself all the time, too Scottish in an English village, too opinionated, too open about her imaginary friend the Raggedy Doctor. He himself was genial and quiet and got along with everyone.

These two facts brought him closer to the Doctor than his wife or daughter ever got.

It started on his first stay in the TARDIS. He explored without Amy sometimes, she said she'd already explored that part of the ship or that she wanted to go to a particular room to relax after running for her life.

The TARDIS was huge. He got lost the first time he went exploring but luckily found his way back to familiar places before he died of dehydration or something. The second time he wrote down every turn he took, making a catalogue of the rooms he found (there was a huge aquarium in one room and another room seemed to be dedicated to post stamps).

On the third time he went exploring alone, he noticed a pattern in the TARDIS. Roses and wolves appeared everywhere. Rose tea in the kitchen, rose soap in the bathrooms (all bathrooms, even Amy and Rory's personal one, right beside their preferred soap), rose patterned wallpapers, rose doorknobs, rose coloured curtains in fake windows, rose carvings in wooden surfaces, a room full of real, growing rose bushes. The wolf wasn't quite as obvious, a book on wolves mating habits on the coffee table, a painting of a wolf, them landing in China when the year of the Wolf began, helping Brothers Grimm decide what the wolf in their stories should be called (the Doctor was abnormally pale after that adventure...), hearing wolves howl inside the TARDIS some nights...

He didn't bring it up with the Doctor.

The second time he was on the TARDIS he didn't really have time for playing Nancy Drew, as he was on his honeymoon.

But on the third time he hit the jack pot.

He found living quarters, much like his and Amy's, except they were more... elaborate.

And the rose and wolf patterns were nowhere to be seen.

Except on one door with the word _Bad Wolf_ and a red rose.

There were pictures, photos and paintings of four people in the room. Above the fireplace (A fireplace!) there was a large painting of three of the four: a man with an unfortunate nose, big ears and the bluest eyes Rory had ever seen, dressed in a leather jacket? Another man was there too, dressed properly for early 19th century, and Rory, even as a straight male, admitted he was rather good looking. The woman in the painting had blond hair and an empire style dress as was fashion at the time and she had the sweetest smile Rory had ever seen.

On either side of the painting there was a holographic image of the same trio. On the bookshelf there were normal 21st century photos of the man with the leather jacket and the blond girl in all kinds of places and time eras. There were also photos of the blond girl and a man with gravity defying hair in a brown pinstriped suit.

But there were no photos of the Doctor.

Around the lounge women's clothes were scattered, like the person who left them intended to come back someday soon. There was a gossip magazine on the coffee table, obviously still unfinished, as was Dickens' _A Tale of Two Cities_. The Harry Potter -series was neatly in the bookshelf, as was the movies Rory recognised along with some Harry Potter movies that were obviously yet to be made, maybe in some twenty years or so, in Rory's timeline. There was even a Harry Potter TV-series, about ten years from the future.

Rory wandered to the kitchen to investigate and opened every door to every cupboard. There were bananas and tea and marmalade and jam and baking ingredients and something for a quick breakfast in them, and if Rory hadn't heard some of the Doctor's comments about domestics, he'd have said this was where he lived. Or had lived, once upon a time.

He decided to give up investigating _this_ part of TARDIS. It seemed... too personal.

After that foray into the forgotten living quarters, Rory started noticing how photos of the blond girl were all over the frequently visited parts of TARDIS. The girl was on a magnet on the fridge door in the communal kitchen Amy and Rory shared with the Doctor. There was a statue of her in the Library under the name of Fortuna. The photos of her were cleverly hidden among photos of Rory, Amy, River and the Doctor.

One night after they'd found out Mels was actually Melody and River Song Rory couldn't sleep. Amy was long since gone to the arms of Morpheus and Rory didn't want to disturb her. He got up, put on his dressing gown and started to wander the TARDIS.

He'd been wandering close to twenty minutes and was contemplating turning back when he heard the unmistakeable sound of the Doctor talking. Curious, he continued forward and came to the living quarters he'd found almost a year past.

He cracked the door open to find the Doctor sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, talking to a live sized holographic image of the blond girl.

"...and there they were, pirates! Pirates, Rose! Not as cool as the Indians we met in the 700 A.D. America with Jack, but still, pirates! Then there was the time TARDIS was a woman. Oh, I think you would have liked her, eccentric as she was... She misses you. It's all over, the roses and the wolves. She probably thinks she's being subtle with the rose soap or the photos of us and Jack in the galley, but she's really not. I miss you, Rose. Please, one more impossible thing. One more impossible return." The Doctor changed from enthusiastic to nostalgic to sad to pleading. "You've done it before, crossed the Void and jumped dimensions, you can do it again. You said "Forever" once. I still believe in you. Please, come back."

Rory saw him reach for the holographic image of who he assumed was Rose, and stop just short of distorting the image. "Still just an image," he heard the Doctor mutter bitterly as his hand fell back to his lap. "Always just an image."

The holographic image dissolved.

"Come in, Rory, I know you're at the door."

Rory jumped when the Doctor called him in before hesitantly opening the door more and stepping inside.

"Take a seat," the Doctor said, not looking at him but staring at the painting above the fireplace.

Rory went to move a cardigan off a chair when the Doctor yelped "Don't touch the clothes!". He'd just avoided touching the garment. With a peculiar look at the Doctor, Rory moved to the other end of the couch and sat down.

"Couldn't sleep?" the Doctor asked after a small, awkward silence.

"No. Amy's out like a light, though. Didn't want to wake her," Rory explained. "I honestly didn't mean to eavesdrop-"

"Think nothing of it," the Doctor waved his concerns away.

"Who was she?"

"Rory Pond," the Doctor said, looking him in the eye for the first time that evening. "Let me tell you a story, the oldest story in the Universe. The love story of a girl, a Bad Wolf and the mad man in a blue box who still loves them."


End file.
